When Yama began, he realized that he had drunk more than he intended, but he could not back out now. He described how he had been kidnapped and taken to the pinnace, and how he had escaped (making no mention of the ghostly ship) and cast himself upon a banyan island far from shore. “I found one of the indigenous fisherfolk stuck fast in a trap left by one of the people of the city which my father administers. The people of the city once hunted the fisherfolk, but my father put a stop to it. The unfortunate fisherman had become entangled in a trap made of strong, sticky threads of the kind used to snare bats which skim the surface of the water for fish. I could not free him without becoming caught fast myself, so I set a trap of my own and waited. When the hunter came to collect his prey, as a spider sidles down to claim a fly caught in its web, it was the hunter who became the prey. I took the spray which dissolves the trap’s glue, and the fisherman and I made our escape and left the foolish hunter to the torments of those small, voracious hunters who outnumber their prey, mosquitoes and blackflies. In turn, the fisherman fed me and took me back to the shore of the Great River. And so we saved each other.”
“A tall tale,” Gorgo said, meeting Yama’s gaze again.
“It is true I missed out much, but if I told everything then we would be up all night. I will say one more thing. If not for the fisherman’s kindness, I would not be here, so I have learnt never to rush to judge any man, no matter how worthless he might appear.”
Gorgo said, “He asks us to admire his reflection in his tales. Let me tell you that what I see is a fool. Any sensible man would have devoured the fisherman and taken his coracle and escaped with a full belly.”
“I simply told you what happened,” Yama said, meeting the man’s yellow gaze. “Anything you see in my words is what you have placed there. If you had tried to steal the hunter’s prey, you would have been stuck there too, and been butchered and devoured along with the fisherman.”
Gorgo jumped up. “I think I know something about hunting, and I do know that you are not as clever as you imagine yourself to be. You side with prey, and so you’re no hunter at all.”
Yama stood too, for he would not look up from a lesser to a higher position when he replied to Gorgo’s insult. Perhaps he would not have done it if he had been less drunk, but he felt the sting of wounded pride. Besides, he did not think that Gorgo was a threat. He was a man who used words as others use weapons. He was taller and heavier than Yama, and armed with a strong jaw and sharp teeth, but Sergeant Rhodean had taught Yama several ways by which such differences could be turned to an advantage.
“I described what happened, no more and no less,” Yama said. “I hope I do not need to prove the truth of my words.”
Tamora grabbed Yama’s hand and said, “Don’t mind Gorgo. He has always wanted to fuck me, and I’ve always refused. He’s quick to anger, and jealous.”
Gorgo laughed. “I think you have me wrong, sister. It is not your delusion I object to, but his. Remember what you owe me before you insult me again.”
“You will both sit down,” the matriarch said. “Yama is our guest, Gorgo. You dishonor all of us. Sit down. Drink. We all lose our temper, and the less we make of it the better.”
“You all owe me,” Gorgo said, “one way or another.” He glared at the circle of people, then spat into the fire and turned and stalked away into the night.
There was an awkward pause. Yama sat down and apologized, saying that he had drunk too much and lost his judgment.
“We’ve all slapped Gorgo around one time or another,” one of the women said. “He grows angry if his advances are ignored.”
“He is more angry than fierce,” someone said, and the rest laughed.
“He’s a fucking disgrace,” Tamora said. “A sneak and a coward. He never hunts, but feeds off the quarry of us all. He shot a man with an arbalest instead of fighting fair—”
“Enough,” the matriarch said. “We do not speak of others to their backs.”
“I’d speak to his face,” Tamora said, “if he’d ever look me in the eye.”
“If we say no more about this,” Yama said, “I promise to say no more about myself.”
There were more drinking games, and more songs, and at last Yama begged to be released, for although Tamora’s people seemed to need little sleep, he was exhausted by his adventures. He found his way back to his own campfire by the faint light of the Arm of the Warrior, falling several times but feeling no hurt. Pandaras was curled up near the warm ashes, his kidney puncher gripped in both hands. Yama lay down a little way off, on the ridge which overlooked the dark city. He did not remember wrapping himself in his blanket, or falling asleep, but he woke when Tamora pulled the blanket away from him. Her naked body glimmered in the near dark. He did not resist when she started to undo the laces of his shirt, or when she covered his mouth with hers.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Country of the Wind
The next morning, Pandaras watched with unconcealed amusement as Tamora swabbed the scratches on Yama’s flanks and the sore places on his shoulders and neck where she had nipped him. Pandaras sleeked back his hair with wrists wet by his own saliva, slapped dust from his ragged jerkin, and announced that he was ready to go.
“We can buy breakfast on the way to the docks. With all the money we have earned, there’s no reason to live like unchanged rustics.”
“You slept soundly last night,” Yama said.
“I was not sleeping at all. When I had not fainted away with fright I was listening to every sound in the night, imagining that some hungry meat-eater was creeping up on me. My people have lived in the city forever. We were not made for the countryside.”
Yama held up his shirt. It was stained with silt from the flood which had fallen through the ceiling of the merchant’s house, and flecked with chaff where he and Tamora had used it as a pillow. He said, “I should wash out my clothes. This will make no impression on our new employers.”
Pandaras looked up. “Are we away then? We’ll collect our reward, and go to our new employer in the Palace of the Memory of the People, and find your family, all before the mountains eat the sun. We could already be there, master, if you had not slept so late.”
“Not so quickly,” Yama said, smiling at Pandaras’s eagerness.
“I’ll be an old man before long, and no use to you at all. At least let me wash your clothes. It will take but a minute, and I am, after all, your squire.”
Tamora scratched at reddened skin at the edge of the bandage around her waist. “Grah. Some squire you’d make,” she said, “with straws in your hair and dirt on your snout. Come with me, Yama. There’s a washing place farther up.”
Pandaras flourished his kidney puncher and struck an attitude and smiled at Yama, seeking his approval. He had an appetite for drama, as if all the world were a stage, and he was the central player. He said, “I will guard your satchel, master, but do not leave me alone for long. I can fight off two or three of these ravenous savages, but not an entire tribe.”
A series of pools in natural limestone basins stepped away down the slope of the hill, with water rising from hot springs near the crest and falling from one pool to the next. Each pool was slightly cooler than the one above. Yama sat with Tamora in the shallow end of the hottest pool he could bear and scrubbed his shirt and trousers with white sand. He spread them out to dry on a flat rock already warm from the sun, and then allowed Tamora to wash his back. Little fish striped with silver and black darted around his legs in the clear hot water, nipping at the dirt between his toes. Other people were using pools higher up, calling cheerfully to each other under the blue sky.